Mercy for the merciless – a guest column by my good friend, M. Regina Cram

I have known M. Regina Cram since high school. Her family is like my second family. The same is true for my husband. He came to know Reg first while I was friendly with her older sister Ginny first. We have all been through a lot of weddings, funerals, tragedies and births together. And all throughout those years we sang together, going through the meticulous journal of songs that Reg and Ginny kept.

I’ve known that Reg has written a regular monthly column for the Catholic Transcript, the official newspaper for the Hartford, CT diocese. Secretly I dreamed of her writing a book. And she finally did! It’s called Do Bad Guys Wear Socks? Living the Gospel in Everyday Life. I’m taking my time reading it because it is so enjoyable and someday soon I will review the book and feature an interview with Reg.

In the meantime, here’s a taste of what this book offers, from her current column in the Catholic Transcript:

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Six words. That’s all. Six simple words, but each time I uttered them, my throat tightened and my eyes burned.

“Tierney and Andrew live in Newtown.”

These six words brought me to tears many times that first week after a shooter massacred 26 people in an elementary school in Newtown, also killing his mother and, at the end, himself. Our daughter Tierney and her husband Andrew settled in Newtown after their wedding a year ago. Andrew grew up there. His family lives in town. His brother went to school with the gunman.

A few days after the shootings, I came across a familiar Bible verse. “For God so loved the world that he sent his only son . . . ”

In the light of the shootings, the verse rankled me. I mean, seriously? God loves the whole world? Everyone? He loves a man who slaughtered 20 babies and the educators who tried to protect them? Jesus died for someone like that?